XPS 8930, BIOS 1.1.26 fails

Had the same issue with the 8930 1.1.26 bios (updating from 1.1.24 on Windows 11) - BIOS fails to install from within Windows due to a driver error dialog. Installing via USB stick (F12 on boot) worked fine. First time this has ever failed to install from Windows for an 8930 BIOS for me. There is something wrong with how Dell has packaged this driver - at least on Windows 11 PCs.

@pdampier - Same problem with Win 10, so there's clearly something amiss in the way SupportAssist and/or Windows interacts with this latest update.

The F12 Flash Update option still works properly, as long as the USB stick is formatted FAT32, which the instructions for updating BIOS via F12 neglect to mention...

LoL I didn't see that you had already figured this out 

I had this problem also. I went through tech support and was told to wipe my hard drive but with a little more digging i found out all you have to do is copy the install file to a thumb drive and restart the system hit F12 and scroll down there is an option to flash the bios from there the drive does not have to be bootable it worked perfectly for me. for some reason this bios update seems to work when installed independently of the operating system 

Steps are given below-

Restart the computer.
Press and hold the CTRL + ESC key on the keyboard until the BIOS Recovery page appears.
On the BIOS Recovery screen, select Reset NVRAM (if available) and press the Enter key. 
Select Recover BIOS and press the Enter key to start the recovery process.

Regards,

Rachel Gomez

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@RachelGomez wrote:

Steps are given below-

Restart the computer.
Press and hold the CTRL + ESC key on the keyboard until the BIOS Recovery page appears.
On the BIOS Recovery screen, select Reset NVRAM (if available) and press the Enter key. 
Select Recover BIOS and press the Enter key to start the recovery process.

 

Regards,

Rachel Gomez

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We're not talking about BIOS Recovery. We're talking about a problem installing the latest BIOS update on a PC that's working properly...

I can confirm the USB method booting to the BIOS menu and then flashing the new 1.1.26 BIOS worked for me. The Windows method worked for me in the past, but not this time. The installation progress bar got stuck at 91% each time (tried it twice). Furthermore, downloading the EXE file and running it from Windows Explorer did not work either. I got an "update version error" message after about 20 seconds. Also, the SupportAssist tool had been a bane for me in the past (seemed very buggy and unreliable), but more recently had seemed to improve, until this current BIOS update.     

Thank you for looking. RoHe posted in the thread about the 8950 BIOS update error and he stated that others have reported this before. Just weird that this doesn't seem to be an issue limited to 1 model as people seem to be having issues across several different models. I am also running win 11 22H2.

I'm running Windows 11 2H22, and I agree with your observation. The Device Manager / Firmware shows System Firmware 1.1.18, BUT if I go to System Information it clearly shows BIOS version 1.1.26. No idea why they're not consistent.

Just curious, if you look in device manager and go to the FIRMWARE tab what version does it list for the system firmware? Is it the current one that you installed via USB? I am wondering because on the 8950 there were some users including myself that also had issues installing the new BIOS version for our PC. I installed the newest update via USB and HWINFO and CPU-Z both say the new bios is installed but device manager says it is the old version. It seems like this could be a problem tied to Windows 11.

I don’t know. It’s like reading tea leaves with this stuff. One thing is for sure. Any future BIOS updates I am going to run through the BIOS itself from USB. I don’t trust the SupportAssist app for BIOS updates anymore. Probably I will manually download and install driver updates too rather than rely on SupportAssist. Sad this stuff isn’t debugged before being pushed out to customers. It’s not like it’s not Dell’s hardware. It’s their systems, not random hardware.

I'm running Win 10 22H2, and don't see any System Firmware entry (old or current) in Device Manager on my XPS 8930 after updating from 1.1.24 to 1.1.26, or after previous updates, using the F12 Flash Update option with a USB stick.

No proof, but maybe this happens because the user tried to update BIOS using SupportAssist/Dell Update or just using Windows alone and the update failed...??

I always do them via the F12 Flash option and they never fail, 14 BIOS updates in past 3 years on this XPS 8930. So possibly that's why I don't see this System Firmware entry in DM.

Always safer to run BIOS updates via F12, even when everything works correctly inside Windows, because there's less software in between the BIOS update .exe file and the hardware.

We don't know if whatever caused this update problem is related to the BIOS update package or possibly to some recent Windows Update that wasn't installed on everyone's PC before these recent BIOS updates were tested for release. 

Too many hands are throwing updates at us from all directions these days. If they just did things right the first time...

It's impossible for Dell to test/debug things 100% when Microsoft is releasing their own updates constantly.

After Dell validates a new BIOS, it still might not install if Microsoft changes something. So Dell would have to go back and change things and revalidate.

It becomes an endless circle and nothing would ever get released with 100% guarantee that it will install and work because they're all on different release schedules...

Yes, I have UEFI Capsule Updates disabled in BIOS setup. That only blocks Windows Update from installing BIOS updates. WU has been offering me BIOS 1.1.24 for XPS 8930 since it was first released, months ago, but WU hasn't installed it.  And I'm already up to BIOS 1.1.26.

Don't know if WU would create that entry in DM after a BIOS update via UEFI Capsule Updates, but that wouldn't explain why the previous version number is listed. Disabling UEFI Capsule Updates is not going to make that entry disappear from Device Manager.

Since you see that entry in DM, click its Details tab and find First Install Date on the list and see if that date corresponds to anything meaningful, eg the date the current BIOS got installed or the date when you suspect WU force-installed the version listed in DM...